It took all of two weeks, and five sessions of negotiations, between the NHL and the NHLPA for the hockey world's sense of cautious optimism about a new collective bargaining agreement to become outright panic.

All it took was for the first substantive details of the talks to become public.

Both RDS, Canada's French-language sports network, and the New York Post reported that the NHL's initial proposal was centered around cutting the players' annual share of hockey-related revenue from 57 percent to 46 percent, along with other management-friendly nuggets such as pushing back eligibility for unrestricted free agency to players with 10 years in the league and eliminating salary arbitration.

Writing in the Post in his Sunday column, Larry Brooks called the NHL's offer a "declaration of war." Later that day, agent Allan Walsh tweeted the same phrase.

Somebody better alert the NYPD before negotiations resume on Wednesday. Hockey fans, stock up on canned goods and highlight reels for the bunker.

Just listen to the way that Donald Fehr, the head of the players' union, came out with guns blazing at Gary Bettman after hearing that whammy of a proposal.

"The optimum is to get a deal done as soon as you could," Fehr said on Friday, as quoted by the Toronto Star after the latest talks. "But if there's some demarcation point, [a date] that it has to be done by, nobody has told us yet. I know the law does not impose one. … I have always viewed a strike as a last resort. What a 'last resort' means is you bargain in good faith, you do everything you can, you listen carefully to what the other side says, you make counter-proposals when you can and you keep at it until you get an agreement."

Wait a minute. Counterproposals?

Right, the NHLPA gets to have its say at the bargaining table as well. Strange as it may seem, Friday's initial proposal from the league was not a take-it-or-leave-it offer.

As of Monday morning, multiple sources contacted by Sporting News could not offer any speculation as to what the union's first counterproposal might be, but there was no sense that it would include Scott Hartnell standing on Sixth Avenue in New York with a bazooka pointed at the NHL offices, or John Tavares taking prisoners in the lobby.

The league's initial offer no more guarantees a work stoppage in September than the Washington Capitals' 7-0 start last season guaranteed them the Stanley Cup. That's not to say that the 2012-13 season will definitely start on time, either, only that it is July and that the NHLPA has yet to even make its first proposal.

When details of the union's labor plan emerge — and despite the best efforts of both Fehr and Bettman to keep negotiations private, details always find a way to emerge — that is when we will really know how far apart the players and management are.

So far, the only basis for comparison to the NHL's offer is the current CBA, under which players receive 57 percent of hockey-related revenues. The midpoint between that and the league's proposed 46 percent would be 51.5 percent. In agreements forged last year, NFL players got 47 percent of their league's revenues, while NBA players agreed to a 50-50 split.

While Bettman and Fehr have both stressed that hockey is not football or basketball, if the only change in the NHL's CBA was to go from the players getting 57 percent to the players getting 51.5 percent, the salary cap for the 2012-13 season would be $63.4 million — within $1 million of where it was for 2011-12.

The reason that such a deep cut in the players' share would result in a near equal salary cap is that league revenues have risen faster than anyone could have dreamed after the cancellation of the 2004-05 season.

When the NHL returned for 2005-06, the salary cap was $39 million. In 2011-12, the salary floor was $48.3 million. Under the current setup, the floor for 2012-13 would be $54.2 million — which is more than seven teams, nearly a quarter of the league, spent last season.

With league revenues rising exponentially, logic dictates that spending on player contracts should rise as well, but what the NHL continues to lack is truly meaningful revenue sharing to ensure that the rising tide of cash does lift all boats. While the Pittsburgh Penguins might not love the idea of subsidizing the New Jersey Devils, such a notion surely has to be preferable to implementing a system under which it is impossible to simultaneously fit Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin under the salary cap and still have enough room to put a full team on the ice.

There is something that the union could propose to alleviate the problems of teams hamstrung by the salary cap and teams barely able to climb to the floor: Eliminate them, and return to the free-market system in which the owners made all the money that made them owners in the first place.

Of course, that was the argument that cost hockey a full season last time around. And if that is the discussion again, then it will be time for panic and hyperbole. Otherwise, they're just haggling over numbers, no matter how far apart they are at what is still a very early stage of negotiations.